


Fear The Living

by sasha_b



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 04:36:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_b/pseuds/sasha_b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What would Shane think of Rick and the Governor?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear The Living

**Author's Note:**

> Written for comment fic on Livejournal for The Walking Dead kinkmeme.

The prison is quiet. 

Rick thinks that’s odd, considering how many people are currently ensconced within its walls. The baby is sleeping, Carol and Daryl are out on watch, and the old folks and young ones he’d brought from Woodbury are alternately sleeping and taking care of one other.

Odd. Odd and weird and he coughs, rubbing his hand over his stubble, the sweat that is constant dampening his clothing and surrounding him with a miasma of dirt and musk and he stands, crossing the hard floor, his boots ringing hollowly. He passes his son, who doesn’t look at him. Carl doesn’t look at him much these days, except to shoot Rick looks that mean more than Carl can voice. Rick doesn’t ponder that; he keeps walking until he’s outside and on the catwalk surrounded by chain link fence, and he leans on the iron and winds his fingers through it, tight and clenching. The sun is bright and the air is turning crisp and he sees Carol at the edge of the northernmost gate, gun in hand, walking slowly, a circuit he’s familiar with.

Lori’s not there. She’s not been there in his head in a while – he’s thankful for that.

He wraps his fingers tighter, and closes his eyes.

Sun beats down. His clothing stinks. He’s tired and bone-aching and he wonders _how long, how long, how long_ , a monotony of a prayer that circles his head and Shane’s there suddenly, standing even with Rick, hands shoved in his pockets, shorn head tilted forward, gaze on his feet.

Rick doesn’t open his eyes. Clouds scud through the sky – winter’s coming – and he sighs and rubs at the back of his neck. Sweaty, grimy. Shane.

When he does chance to look, there’s nothing there. Licking his lips, he cocks his head and leans against the coils of fence again, knowing what’s coming, knowing he can’t be what Carl needs, what he wants to be until he lets go of some things. Things he’s done, things he’s ashamed of, things that this world has driven him to do.

Or so he’d like to tell himself. But then there’s the Governor, and Woodbury, and Rick knows in the heart he’s buried since Bad Things happened that he’s done what he’s done and doesn’t regret it.

“You’re changin’,” the voice is sharp and as cold as the links that touch his face. “You’d like to think you’re better, but you’re not.”

“I’m not better,” Rick answers, all the _tired_ in his body rippling through in his words, their weight dragging him down, down, down. Fuck the stupid sun. Why is it shining when all this shit has happened to him? To his family?

“You judged me for bein’ the way I was. And now here you are, brother, and you’re just like me. This was me, not you? I did this?” Shane’s voice is soft and quiet, but the fire of the truths he speaks burns Rick’s skin, flaying him open, broken. “You’re just like him. You’d be him, if you could now.”

“I would not,” Rick’s vehemence surprises even him, and he open his eyes finally and turns to the specter he sees when things get capital B-A-D. Even if he won’t admit it. “My people mean the world to me. I would not turn on them. Not like he’s done.”

“Bullshit, my friend. He is you, no matter what you think. You were threatened by me? Took me out? What’s stopping you from doing that again? What’s stopping you from taking over?”

Rick’s lips roll inward, and he bites them painfully, drawing light blood that tastes too familiar. His back aches. Visions of Shane’s death dance behind his lids, the blood hot and cold at once, his cry of despair shattering the peace he’d thought he might find here.

“I let him go when I could have killed him. We lost Andrea, and still I didn’t kill him. I am not like him.”

“Maybe…but you could be. And then what will it all be for?” Shane rubs a hand over his skull, a gesture Rick’s conjured with memory and a ripping sob catches in his throat at the thought - _you did this, not me. This wasn’t me._

This _might_ be me.

“This world is hard and cold, Rick. I saw that. It took a lot to see that, but I did and I did what I had to in order to protect the ones I loved. This Governor guy seems to understand that too – ”

“He’s a monster.”

“He is!” Shane bursts out laughing. “And he escaped! What does that tell you?”

“Tells me he doesn’t care ‘bout nothing save his own skin. And revenge. I care about my skin, Shane, but I care about the skins of those people in there too,” he jerks his chin toward the prison proper. And when he says it, he realizes he _does._ He does mean it, but then…what if? What if that’s the way things have to be?

They don’t have to be. He can choose, damn it.

Violence in a violent world has its place. But, but, but. Lori’s smile and Judith’s are so similar, and Carl, dear God Carl, his son. His poor damaged boy. Carl will _not_ be like he could be. Like he might be.

Rick lets go of the fence chains and pushes away from it. He looks at Shane, whose bloody wound is now gaping open, his face white, his hands red and holding his gun. “I am sorry, brother,” Rick says, the words rolling out of his mouth, the ease at which he says them shocking and painful and he believes the truth of them. “I am sorry I did this to you. But you weren’t you anymore, and I’m not goin’ down that road. Amen,” he adds out loud, and turns, his boots thumping as he turns toward the gate and heads down the stairs, steps sure, true and leading him toward his son and daughter, where the things that are so unlike what the Governor and Shane – and what Rick could have become – are waiting for him.

He misses his friend. He misses Shane sometimes like a missing arm. He misses him so very much. But Shane changed, and Shane wasn’t Shane anymore, and no matter the reasons – Jesus. He wipes his eyes and there will be never be happiness where that whole mess is concerned. He wavers, hands shaking, but keeps going, forcing himself to walk on.

No matter what Rick thinks, the death of his best friend won’t ever be okay. But it’s too late and now in order to stay human, Rick has to look away from that and look toward his future.

His future called Carl and Judith.

He will find the Governor, he’s sure of it, as the other man will try and find _him_. But in the sun and the cool wind and in the shadow of the prison they’re calling home now, he closes his eyes before pushing the gate open and thinks _Rick Grimes, Rick Grimes. Father, friend. Human._

_Man._

His eyes burn but Shane’s voice is gone, Shane’s presence is gone, and he opens the gate and heads back into the cell block to his son and away from the possibility of _might be_.


End file.
